‘It looks, to the people of New York State,’ he said, ‘like one charade after another’

Eric Schneiderman suggested lengthening legislators’ terms to four years and raising their salaries to achieve a full-time legislature.
Photo:
Agaton Strom for The Wall Street Journal

With proposed ethics overhauls looming over state budget negotiations, New York Attorney General
Eric Schneiderman
on Monday criticized the state’s “very, very ill” system of government and called for a full-time Legislature.

According to a copy of remarks to deliver in the evening at New York Law School, Mr. Schneiderman noted the cycle in which a scandal involving Albany lawmakers prompts “reforms that largely tinker at the margins,” followed by self-congratulations and complacency until the next scandal. He checked off the four times since 2005 that Albany has enacted new ethics rules.

“It looks, to the people of New York state,” he said, “like one charade after another.”

Mr. Schneiderman, a Democrat who served for a decade as a member of the Legislature, didn’t reject the proposals being advanced by Gov.
Andrew Cuomo
as a condition of budget negotiations. In fact, the attorney general defended the constitutionality of Mr. Cuomo’s decision to link the measures to appropriations bills—a step the Legislature has suggested it could challenge in court.

But Mr. Schneiderman also urged the governor to pursue even more aggressive measures, most significantly a ban on outside income.

“It is impossible to avoid conflicts—or the appearance of conflicts—if legislators have outside employment,” he said. “The time has come to end it.”

For the Legislature to be full-time, the attorney general suggested lengthening the terms of lawmakers to four years from two, as well as raising their salaries to an amount between the base salaries for New York City Council members, $112,500, and members of the U.S. House of Representatives, $174,000.

The circumstances of former Assembly Speaker
Sheldon Silver’s
outside employment are at the heart of the federal corruption charges against him brought by the office of Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, whom the attorney general described as having “done New Yorkers a great service.”

Mr. Schneiderman also promoted some of the changes Mr. Cuomo has proposed, including the elimination of per diem payments. He instead suggested the state reimburse legislators for their expenses after reviewing their receipts.

The attorney general, however, also issued some veiled criticism of the governor’s previous efforts at ethics reform, saying those changes have done little to curb corruption.

“Sadly, every time incremental reforms have been called ‘sweeping’ or ‘groundbreaking’—billed as a solution to the problem—those words have been proven false,” Mr. Schneiderman said. “The primary impact of many highly touted, marginal reforms has been to allow business as usual to continue.”